Plan 11 – Supporting teachers

Plagiarism detection software is fairly simple to use, but technological and time demands are obstacles for many teachers.

In addition, teachers experience feelings of solitude and discouragement when they are confronted with plagiarism. They have the feeling that they have been duped by their students.

Centralizing the review process in a neutral place (for example, at the library) relieves them of that task. It is enough for one employee to be assigned the task of running student works through the detection software and then sending the reports to the teachers. This could facilitate acceptance of the process.

Another advantage of this type of centralization is the possibility of compiling descriptive statistics on cases of plagiarism revealed by department, school or unit. The compiled data can then be used to put together useful statistics and to make adjustments to the charter on ethics.

Suggestions :

• Appoint an employee to be responsible for the plagiarism checks.

• Ask students to turn their work in to that employee on a flash drive before turning it in to their professors.

• Send feedback to the teachers through the systems for handling cases of plagiarism.

• Compile a database of statistics by discipline and by school for analytical purposes.